Victor Chandler is third in line of successful bookie managers in his family. He was the owner and chairman of BetVictor, one of the world’s most renowned sportsbooks, from 1974 to 2014. Chandler earned fame for taking over his local family business and turning it into a multi-billion-dollar offshore betting company. He is also known for sponsoring the English football club Nottingham Forest.
Victor Chandler was born on the 18th of April, 1951, into a family with a rich gambling business heritage. His grandfather, William Chandler, founded the Walthamstow Stadium and a bookmaker that would later become BetVictor. His father, Victor Chandler Sr., inherited the business in 1946 and expanded it by taking advantage of legislation changes in 1961 to open up a chain of betting shops.
Chandler got exposed to the world of gambling pretty early. He even placed his very first bet alongside his dad at a horse race track at a very young age. When they weren’t at the race track, the son and father would spend quality time together playing card games with the rest of the family. They enjoyed this pastime even at the dinner table.
Growing up, Chandler wasn’t the most dedicated student as he often skipped classes. At the age of 17, he was kicked out of the Highgate School after sneaking out of his dorm through a window. He continued his education at the Millfield School. One popular story is that Chandler Sr. convinced the headmaster of the school to accept his son in exchange for writing off some gambling debts.
Despite his poor academic performance and lack of interest in schooling, Chandler graduated from Millfield School in 1969. Surprisingly, he wasn’t particularly interested in the family’s business. Even his father wasn’t keen on engaging him in the bookmaking industry and “did his best to put me off,” according to Chandler’s interviews.
Chandler later moved to Switzerland to attend a catering college, but was soon expelled. He then settled in Spain, where he worked in real estate. Sadly, while he was in Spain, his father was diagnosed with aggressive cancer in 1974 and died shortly after. At that point, Chandler had no choice but to take over the family business, left with a mother and two sisters to support.
Chandler took over the family business as a 23-year-old and discovered it was in severe financial trouble. The troubles deepened under the archaic system in Britain at the time. The rules stated that a son could only take over pitches (where bookies stand and make odds at racecourses) from his father if he had worked in the business for at least two years. Chandler hadn’t done that, resulting in losing the business’s pitches at major racecourses.
Chandler later stated that this was probably the best thing that happened to him. Instead of dedicating himself to pitches, he got the opportunity to focus on being a businessman. He soon started refitting his father’s betting shops. He also sold a few shops and made cutbacks. Two years into struggling with the business, the young Chandler was ready to call it quits and considered selling after receiving an offer from Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Enterprises. However, he refused the bid at the last minute as he felt the money wasn’t enough to justify selling his family’s decades-old business.
Deciding to stick it out, Chandler made some strategic plans for the business during the Queen’s Silver Jubilee year in 1977. One of these is setting up a Victor Chandler bookmaking desk in the stands at Ascot. He earned between £100,000 and £200,000, which helped keep the business running.
Soon after, he started making big moves, securing a line of credit from the Allied Irish Bank. This allowed him to expand his network of betting shops. According to Chandler’s estimates, his company was worth £1 million by 1978.
The Victor Chandler bookmaker business grew steadily after initial challenges. In the 1990s, the company was getting lots of action from Asian gamblers who wanted to place bets on football games. This was especially the case during the 1994 World Cup. Chandler saw an opportunity in targeting customers in new and foreign markets. However, the 9% British betting tax incurred by punters at the time was putting off international and British gamblers.
Chandler started considering making the controversial decision to move his business offshore to become free of UK tax. After considering various territories, he obtained a betting license in Gibraltar in 1996. Three years later, Chandler moved his entire business to this British overseas territory. The company took off and started snowballing into one of the world’s leading bookmakers. Another factor that also helped at the time was the rise of online gambling, which offered betting companies the chance to have a wider reach.
Many other UK sports betting books followed suit and started moving their brands offshore. As expected, this massive move negatively impacted the UK’s gambling sector. It resulted in Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, abolishing the UK betting tax in 2001 to make the businesses return.
Around the time Victor Chandler moved to Gibraltar, the internet began to grow in popularity. Recognizing its potential, he decided to launch an online betting platform in 1999. As a result, his sportsbooks became one of the first to offer their services over the internet. The website initially only featured odds and a phone number that punters could use to make wagers.
The company also launched a separate casino platform in 2001. It was branded The Spin Room and originally offered only 10 games.
In 2004, Chandler rebranded his company as VC Bet. At the same time, The Spin Room was modernized and re-launched as VC Online Casino. A poker platform, VC Poker, followed soon.
The VC Bet became Victor Chandler once again in 2008 before adopting the current name BetVictor in 2012.
Victor Chandler’s personal and love life has been somewhat complicated. One of his friends once said, “He was so charming that he had women falling down his feet all his life.” His first meaningful relationship documented by the media was with a woman named Carol Masters. The two reportedly dated for a “long” time before the relationship “fizzled out.”
In 2001, Chandler met a woman named Susan during a business trip in South Korea. They started a relationship and got married, with Chandler adopting Susan’s son Jamie. The couple later welcomed two more sons, Billy and Johnny. Chandler and Susan started experiencing issues in their marriage in 2009 and divorced two years later.
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Another interesting highlight of Chandler’s personal life happened before his divorce was finalized. According to a report by The Daily Mail, he started seeing his cousin Peter’s ex-wife, Caroline. The two have known each other for 14 years and bonded over their respective divorces. This relationship resulted in tension between Chandler and his devastated cousin. It caused Peter to quit as head of communication for the Victor Chandler group, where he had worked for over 12 years.
Victor Chandler’s sports betting activities are not just limited to providing odds. He also enjoys putting action on sports events and is responsible for one of the biggest wagers ever. In 2004, Chandler and Fred Done, the co-founder of Betfred, placed a massive £1 million bet against each other on the outcome of the 2004-05 English Premier League (EPL) season.
Being a massive Manchester United fan, Done was convinced that the team would finish higher than Chelsea in the standings. He offered a £1 million bet to anyone who thought otherwise. At the time, Chelsea just hired Jose Mourinho as the new head coach and was expected to struggle. The only person who took the wager was Chandler.
Unfortunately for Done, not only did Chelsea finish higher than Manchester United by 18 points, but they also went on to win the league. Although their punt was only based on a phone conversation, Done paid up in full. The bet garnered quite a lot of attention from the media for both parties, giving their brands some positive publicity.
As former chairman of the BetVictor brand, Victor Chandler has made a fortune in the gambling industry. His worth was estimated to be £150 million in 2009 by the Sunday Times Rich List. The publication ranked him as the 362nd richest person or family in the UK. Interestingly, this was a decline of more than half compared to the estimation of £365 million in 2008.
The most recent available data is from 2020. At the time, the Essex Rich List estimated Chandler’s net worth at £230 million.
After decades of visionary leadership and carrying his family’s legacy forward, Victor Chandler stepped down as Chairman of BVGroup, parent company of BetVictor, in 2014. As a part of the transition, he decided to sell a significant part of his shares in the company for an undisclosed sum. The buyer was Michael Tabor, a renowned British businessman, bookmaker, and racehorse owner. It marked the end of an era for the Chandler family and the company as it went under new leadership.
Chandler briefly remained as a consultant for the company before leaving it for good. In 2017, he returned to the betting industry by founding BetLion, a sportsbook primarily focused on Africa. The company was later acquired by 888Africa.
In 2023, Chandler published a biography titled “Victor Chandler Put Your Life On It: Staying at the Top in the Cut-Throat World of Gambling.” The book was a memoir depicting his life and how he turned the struggling Victor Chandler betting business into the widely successful brand it has become today. It became one of the best sports betting books in history.
From the young days of skipping classes to becoming an iconic man with indelible marks on the online gambling industry, there is no denying that Victor Chandler has led an exciting and impactful life. As a social person, Chandler has dabbled in many fascinating pursuits, some even beyond the confines of sports betting. Let’s get into some notable and interesting facts about this trailblazer.
Victor Chandler’s love for horses is no secret. After all, they played a crucial part in the early days of his bookmaking business. In one interview, he said he rides four times a week and that seeing his horses is the first thing he does in the morning and the last thing at night.
This passion also extends to owning champion racehorses. Chandler has owned several horses in the UK, South Africa, and the US over the past three decades. He formed a syndicate called “Men in Our Position,” which owned Zaynar, the 2009 Cheltenham Hurdle winner. He said no sporting moment was sweeter for him than seeing Zaynar win.
Victor Chandler had many famous friends. One of such notable and peculiar friendships was with the famous painter Lucian Freud. The two bonded over their shared love for horse racing. As Chandler shared in one interview, they had fun evenings out together, sometimes in the company of other notable figures like Francis Bacon and Jeffrey Bernard.
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Freud, who had a habit of painting his friends, even created Chandler’s portrait in the late 1980s. He named it “Man in a String Chair.” This oil piece sold for £4.15 million during an auction in 2006.
Like most bookmakers, Chandler realized quite early that one of the best ways to expand the Victor Chandler bet brand is through sponsorship. Over the years, his company sponsored many sporting events, including horse racing, snooker, and darts. The approach brought exposure to the sportsbook, significantly increasing traffic, especially online. If you ask which betting app has the best cash out, we can totally recommend BetVictor.
One of the most significant sponsorship deals in BetVictor’s history took place in July 2009 when Victor Chandler agreed to become the official principal sponsor of Nottingham Forest F.C. The agreement reportedly included a “significant six-figure fee.” As part of the deal, he offered to pay the season tickets for every fan who decides to open an account with the BetVictor online betting site if the club wins the Championship. The stunt was set to cost him approximately £6 million. However, he ended up keeping the money as Forest finished the season third in the standings.
Known as the “Gentleman Bookmaker,” Victor Chandler is a pioneer who has considerably impacted the gambling industry. He became the first UK bookie to take his business offshore to tax-haven Gibraltar and pioneered internet betting. Chandler’s big moves spelled a new era for the BetVictor group, prompting it to new heights. The sportsbook became a billion-dollar enterprise and one of the leading gambling brands.
Even though Chandler has given up his shares of BetVictor and is no longer actively involved in the industry, his remarkable legacy will not be forgotten soon, at least not by BetZillion.
